I agree that this conversation, as currently started, is unlikely to lead to anything more productive. As such, I’ll keep my response here brief [1], in case you want to use it as a starting point if you ever intend for us to talk about it again.
Noncomputational physicalism sounds like it’s just confused. Physics performs computations and can’t be separated from doing that.
Dual aspect theory is incoherent because you can’t have our physics without doing computation that can create a being that claims and experiences consciousness like we do.
As I read these statements, they fail to contend with a rather basic map-territory distinction that lies at the core of “physics” and “computation.”
The basic concept of computation at issue here is a feature of the map you could use to approximate reality (i.e., the territory) . It is merely part of a mathematical model that, as I’ve described in response to Ruby earlier, represents a very lossy compression of the underlying physical substrate [2]. This is because, in this restricted and epistemically hobbled ontology, what is given inordinate attention is the abstract classical computation performed by a particular subset of the brain’s electronic circuit. This is what makes it anti-physicalist, as I have explained:
As a general matter, accepting physicalism as correct would naturally lead one to the conclusion that what runs on top of the physical substrate works on the basis of… what is physically there (which, to the best of our current understanding, can be represented through Quantum Mechanical probability amplitudes), not what conclusions you draw from a mathematical model that abstracts away quantum randomness in favor of a classical picture, the entire brain structure in favor of (a slightly augmented version of) its connectome, and the entire chemical make-up of it in favor of its electrical connections.
To make it even more explicit, this interpretation of the computationalist perspective (that the quantum stuff doesn’t matter etc) was confirmed as accurate by its proponents.
So when you talk about a “pattern instantiated by physics as a pure result of how physics works”, you’re not pointing to anything meaningful in the territory, rather only something that makes sense in the particular ontology you have chosen to use to view it through, a frame that I have explained my skepticism of already.
Put differently, “computation” is not an ontologically primitive concept in reality-as-it-is, but only in mathematical approximations of it that make specific assumptions about what does and doesn’t exist. Those assumptions can be sometimes justified in terms of intuitive appeal, expediency of calculation etc, but reifying them as unchallengeable axioms of the universe rather than of your model of it is wrong.
I agree that this conversation, as currently started, is unlikely to lead to anything more productive. As such, I’ll keep my response here brief [1], in case you want to use it as a starting point if you ever intend for us to talk about it again.
As I read these statements, they fail to contend with a rather basic map-territory distinction that lies at the core of “physics” and “computation.”
The basic concept of computation at issue here is a feature of the map you could use to approximate reality (i.e., the territory) . It is merely part of a mathematical model that, as I’ve described in response to Ruby earlier, represents a very lossy compression of the underlying physical substrate [2]. This is because, in this restricted and epistemically hobbled ontology, what is given inordinate attention is the abstract classical computation performed by a particular subset of the brain’s electronic circuit. This is what makes it anti-physicalist, as I have explained:
To make it even more explicit, this interpretation of the computationalist perspective (that the quantum stuff doesn’t matter etc) was confirmed as accurate by its proponents.
So when you talk about a “pattern instantiated by physics as a pure result of how physics works”, you’re not pointing to anything meaningful in the territory, rather only something that makes sense in the particular ontology you have chosen to use to view it through, a frame that I have explained my skepticism of already.
This will be my final comment in this thread, regardless of what happens.
Put differently, “computation” is not an ontologically primitive concept in reality-as-it-is, but only in mathematical approximations of it that make specific assumptions about what does and doesn’t exist. Those assumptions can be sometimes justified in terms of intuitive appeal, expediency of calculation etc, but reifying them as unchallengeable axioms of the universe rather than of your model of it is wrong.